Bailouts are common, but results are mixed

Europeans, who consider us babies where politics is concerned, are far more cynical than the worst of us here, and after countless wars of conquest [meaning pillage and looting] for foppish princes, mad kings and psychotic leaders they are very careful.

Germans actually have a word "Schlimbesserung" to describe all that we have witnessed under the name of free trade, liberalization, globalization, downsizing, rightsizing, offshoring and all the other mindless crap that was supposed to be miraculous.

The meaning of schlimbesserung translates to

-- worsening by improvement.

A great quote from another forum:

The bottom line is this: there are some problems that even the best people, with the best intentions, cannot solve themselves. For those times and those situations, government becomes the backstop of last resort.

There is no business which has shown itself to be willing or able to play nicely with others. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, money corrupts even worse. Her ethe government is in essence putting itself on the line trying to calm the fears of the nation and the world; but who else could do it? To be sure, the nimrods who got us INTO the stuation with their greed can't be trusted to get us back out.

And then there are the free marketeers (second cousins to the Mouseketeers) whose mantra is "Deregulation fosters competiton and lowers costs!"

The airline industry was deregulated 31 years ago, when Jimmy Carter caved to the demands of the idiots. Does anyone remember flying back then? You got a nice, big plane with wonderful service, and you flew non-stop 90% of the time. Today, you get big jets only between big cities, and puddle jumpers everywhere else. A flight from Syracuse to my brother's in North Carolina, which used to take 2 /12 hours, and on a decent sized plane with lunch served, now takes 7 hours, with two layovers, on puddle jumpers that I can't even stand up straight in...and they CHARGE you for peanuts and soda! And you pay twice as much.

Remember the big cable deregulation? Is everybody paying the lower costs they promised? Everybody have at least two, and probably three competing cable systems in their area?

Hey, they broke up Ma Bell, so you can own your own phone...but can you read and understand all the charges on your phone bill now?

Why is it that the free marketeers can't see what happens when any indutry is left to its own devices, and why regulation is necessary?

Should the banks be nationalizxed? HELL, NO! Do they NEEd to be right now? HELL,YES! Stay long enough to put some teeth into regulations, then sell off the government's stake in the bank...to the people. Now individual can own more than maybe 1 or 2% of the stock and all executive level salaries and benny packages must be approved by say 90% of shareholders. If the bank loses value, those packages would be tied to the bank's performance.

And the bailout of the airline industry and farmers in the 80's.

The corporations are independent kingdoms: within their own realm they only answer to 'market forces'.

The Government and the Corporations have been telling us that is the way it is supposed to be.

Why change now?

Interesting that they included the Chrysler bailout.

Anybody else remember what Lee Iaccoca had to say recently?

“We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car”.

I think that pretty much covers it.